Sweet Caroline
by rayn Monday, Sep 1 2014, 2:55pm
international / poetry / post

(to K)

it’s dawn and i haven’t slept
(again)
this dawn is tinctured with
melancholia,
the wind sighs reminding
me of the sadness in ur eyes
a life lost, tho something created
never really dies
we feel the pain
of robbery, being denied

i remember,
suspended in fluid
warm and comfortable
until the cord twirled around
my neck slowly cutting
the blood supply
to my tiny baby brain

i wasn’t breathing, bluer
than new denim
when born
the delivery team in frenzy
cut and unwound
the noose my mother’s uterus
had happily supplied
for my demise

but i made it thru against the odds
to be tortured and abused
as an infant, boy and youth
i should have known
from that initial phase
when her womb almost
became my tomb

she never forgot,
unfinished business
so after she drove my drunken
war-deranged father to suicide
she started on me,
i was 11

relentless verbal
and psychological abuse
which she had mastered
over the years driving my father
to an early grave,
he was 39

‘ur no good, ur just like ur father’
she would say, watching my eyes
and reaction hoping the dart
would reach my heart
but it never did,
relentless was her cruel abuse

she never laid a hand
that was far too gross
for her special talents

what did i know except
the sun at dawn, birds cutting
thru the air and the ecstasy of
waves shooting skyward
after crashing on coastal rocks

You stand before me now,
with a haunting beauty
so sad I could cry for all humanity
it’s in ur face and soul
not wasting the tiniest measure
of love which the creator bestows freely
on all humanity,
but is squandered by most --
that is real tragedy, not personal loss
that cuts a heart
to bleed and heal humanity

i survived incessant abuse
and u ur personal tragedy
u have too much to give to withdraw
or to confine yourself to lesser
matters; go federal, girl
give it a measure of ur strength,
u are surely better equipped
like an Amazon armed
not with a sword but a rose,
the corruption that infects
states and the nation
has no chance

pain has brought us together
but it is flowing love
that liberates us all